Berlin, Germany, 23 April 2022 — Three products of MicroPort Scientific Corporation (MicroPort®) have won the iF Design Award 2022, which was recently announced after more than 10,000 entries from 57 countries were evaluated. The awarded products are: the Honghu Orthopedic Surgical Robot developed by Shanghai Microport MedBot (Group) Co., Ltd. (MicroPort® MedBot®), the disposable peroral cholangioscopy catheter developed by MicroPort Urocare (Jiaxing) Co., Ltd. (MicroPort® Urocare) and the Lingli Smart Stethoscope developed by Shanghai Duowen Medtech Co., Ltd. (Duowen Medtech). The three winning products were unanimously recognized by the international jury in all five criteria of idea, form, function, impact, and differentiation.
Known for its judging philosophy of “independence, rigor, and reliability”, the iF Design Award was launched in 1953 and is organized annually by the Industrial Design Forum Hannover, the longest-standing industrial design institution in Germany. The iF Design Award is a category for innovative product design open only to businesses, and all winning products will receive the iF logo.
The Honghu Orthopedic Surgical Robot is designed for assisted total knee replacement. It has a short learning curve and features high stability and precision, ensuring precise and customized surgery and can better address the urgent clinical needs for efficient medical resource use and precision medicine. It features a preoperative planning system, which can create a 3D model of the knee joint based on data collected from preoperative CT scans and generate a prosthesis implantation plan tailored to the patient's anatomical profile. During the surgery, it can provide anatomical and mechanical information in real time through its navigation system, and produce intelligent advice as a reference for surgeons to make an assessment. Its highly dexterous and lightweight robotic arm allows for precise and highly effective osteotomy, which improves accuracy and efficiency. As a result, the postoperative lower limb alignment is significantly better than in conventional operations. At the same time, the Honghu system helps patients recover more quickly after the surgery by avoiding damages from intramedullary positioning in traditional replacement therapy and reducing complications.
The award-winning product of MicroPort® Urocare consists of a disposable peroral cholangioscopy catheter and an endoscopic imaging processor that allows visualization of the bile ducts for the diagnosis of benign and malignant tumors as well as the treatment of gallstone and biliary stricture, hence lowering the difficulty of the procedure and reducing the use of X-rays. Building on the functionality of a conventional cholangioscope, the system features an improved operating handle, making single-handed operation more comfortable. Thanks to its cross-shaped bending orientation and wider instrument access, the system provides a greater and more precise surgical field of view. The larger biopsy forceps are also able to obtain more tissue samples, which is of great significance to clinical diagnosis and treatment.
Duowen Medtech's award-winning Lingli Smart Stethoscope is a simple and easy-to-use product with a focus on ergonomic design and user experience. It can be used in a variety of applications including cardiac, respiratory, and pulmonary diseases. In addition to the functions of a conventional electronic stethoscope, Lingli has a single-lead ECG function that can simultaneously measure, collect, record, and wirelessly transmit phonocardiogram and electrocardiogram signals. It can provide automatic identification and auxiliary diagnosis of physiological data through the supporting app and AI services, and offer remote diagnosis services through its cloud platform. The device has an OLED touch screen that shows recording data and translates transient sounds into a visualized phonocardiogram. Lingli has excellent functionality, applicability, and ease of use, which not only allows professional physicians to save data for research and educational purposes after auscultation and ECG checks, is also easy for patients to do simple tests at home and receive remote medical diagnoses from their doctors. The product is expected to be launched in the second half of 2022.
While striving to provide diversified products that meet the clinical needs, MicroPort®, as a pioneer in innovative high-end medical solutions, will continue to embrace a five-prong product philosophy in research and development—science and technology as the foundation, craftsmanship as an attitude, artistic taste as a vision, freedom of thought at the core, and a humanistic approach as the starting point and the destination. In the future, MicroPort® will continue to innovate, focus on details, and dive deeper into customers’ needs. We will translate our research, development, and innovation capacity into superior products and provide more quality and inclusive total solutions for extending and reshaping life.